Is there an Estimate on the New ROM?

Overall I like the phone. It is snappy and I like to not have to deploy the keyboard. It is always there. I have never had a Square screen before (always the traditional PPC). I do have some of the issues others are discussing.

The Charging is very strange. The lamp will come on, it will say it is chaging but it isn't. I have a lot of chagers with the mini usb connector. I suspect that they are not putting out the proper voltage to chage the phone. They all work on my Wizard but not on the 503g.  Again I suspect it is the chager and not the phone but why would the lamp light?

The camera has locked the device hard on a couple occasions. Since there is not a soft reset button you have to pull the battery.

Sometimes when I try to turn the screen back on nothing will happen. If I press a key the keyboard backlight will illuminate. The way I fix this is to hold down the power button. Then the screen comes on and it asks if I am sure I want to power off and I say no.

One time I had the keyboard stop working altogether. The jog wheel and the screen were fine. Soft reset fixed it.

I have monitored this forum and I applied some of the modaco fixes and they worked. I'd like to be able to select hi quality in the camera app and have it stick as well but do not see that one.

 In short - Can someone (Martha) let us know an estimate for the new ROM release and possibly the fixes that are supposed to be in it? I realize that software is not simple and that anything you post is very much subject to change but I have 14 day window to return or exchange the device and I would like to know at least a ballpark timeframe to help me determine if  I want to stick with it.

Thanks for your help and support!

joshua 

First ROM update being finalized today (Aug 17), to be posted probably Monday and to be followed up with another soon. This one will address keyboard issues & free memory on ROM as the primary concerns.

Martha

I have noticed that charging with the cradle or it I plug the charger directly into the 503, it only charges to about 95%. (I am using the the cradle and mini usb charger that came with the 503). The red charging light goes off as if fully charged, but when I check, it is at 95%. I have done a hard re-set and soft re set many times with the same result. I have even drained my battery down to about 10% and let it charge from there, but it indicates that charging is complete at 95%, even in sleep mode and If I charge if the unit is off completely.  Any ideas?

Thanks,

 Carl

So good to know that there will be a new ROM update soon.  Thanks Martha and Expansys for such a quick response.

I've used the 503g for around 2 weeks, although it does have some problems, but I've no regrets of having it.

Pros:
- Screen is bright and crisp
- Can hear and speak clearly (I think the phone speaker is not loud enough, and I can't hear clearly for the first few days.  I try to put the phone higher or lower and I found that if I put the phone higher, i.e. the earhole around the middle of the screen, I can hear much louder.  but I would suggest to allow adjusting the volume using the jog wheel.
- Seems no problem in using the Keypad
- Fast

Cons:
- a bit wide and heavy
- Rom not stable yet- soft reset once a day on average (easy to hang when loading the Spb-Today screen)
- The soft reset button is inconvenient to reach (maybe expansys/TFW should redesign it when producing next batch of 503g)
- Hard to look for the symbol when the backlit is on
- Unable to connect to my notebook/other mobile phone using Bluetooth.  (enter the same password on both side but not work)  Can anyone share a How-to if you can make it?
- Not switch to alphabet mode automatically when Start Menu is activate.

Although the free ROM is just around 35MB, I can still have 22MB free if I install the apps on the Storage card.

Apps install so far:
- Foxit PDF Reader
- Opera
- Spb Mobile Shell + Phone Suite + Pocket Plus
- All Modaco Fix
- AXZY KeepRecordin
- CE-Star Suite
- MyMobiler

funny i have the impression beeing a donkey with a carrot in front of my eyes....promises, promises...Lets see if the ROM does appear today as said last week. as it was "possible" to see it Monday, btu it didn't appear.

tadam now lets see if Ubiquio respects what they annnounce.

May we please have Martha post something re: the ROM in this thread; it is way past Friday and we could use a status update.

Thank you in advance.

Martha - please can you provide news of the ROM update. I've had my 503G about 3 weeks now, and daily curse it's foibles, many of which have been reported by other users.

Specifically:

• The keyboard performance is erratic when using the 'red dot' key - sometimes pressing it once 'shifts' only the next character, but often it goes in to 'shift lock' instead. I've also tried pressing the red dot and another key simultaneously, but with equally inconsistent results. It's not unusable, but is massively frustrating, and I won't be recommending this unit to anyone until it's fixed.
• The charging is problematic (and not just 'slow') - I've plugged my 503G in to a 'standard' ac mini-usb charger (bought from Expansys) and it's not only 'not' charged, but actually drained the 503G battery - same for a USB sync'n'charge cable. The only consistent result is with the supplied charger and sync'n'charge cable. As far as I can tell, there is no mention of this '10 pin' charger requirement in the PDA specs, so to find that I cannot rely on my previously purchased mini-usb cables and chargers is also hugely frustrating. I suggest that you do a bit of good PR and ship some free 10 pin mini convertors to your customers who have bought the 503G.
• The multi-way navigation button is mechanically poor - it feels like it 'clicks' physically, but fails to generate an on-screen action - to get it to work I have to press down 'much' harder than I would like.
• A quick press of the power button regularly fails to 'activate' the unit - it usually requires me to press and hold, then dismiss the 'Power Off Hint' dialogue.
• I have to soft reset the unit on average about once per day, as it 'hangs'. I've noticed no particular pattern so far, but I'm a heavy email user and that's where I'm most often resetting it from! I have noticed on two occasions that it seems to be working okay, but all emails display as empty - a reset fixed it both times.
• The phone signal strength is very poor - I have a Motorola Q9 and a Qtek 8500 both of which show full signal strength in my home office, where the 503G barely registers one bar.
• Also, to get 3G I have to specifically choose the HSDPA mode, then when I go out of 3G coverage I have to manually switch it back
• The battery fails to charge to 100% even if it's been on all night

A couple, more personal, comments:

• The jog dial is on the wrong side of the unit for right handed people - it's very hard to click 'accurately' with the index finger?
• The keyboard backlight seems to actually 'obscure' the keyboard characters in in poor lighting conditions (not dark) - this is a fault common with other units, but they seem to have got it right on the Q9

None of these are abosolute show-stopper issues, but there enough to mean I can't recommend this in to my company. Hopefully, UBiQUio/Expansys will show some excellent customer service and address these issues quickly!!

I hope this is helpful.

Thanks, Nick

One slightly facetious questions...please can you tell me how to pronounce 'UBiQUio' and what it means?

Hi all,

As you may already know, I mentioned we'd be posting a ROM update, here's a bit of an update:  

• Frees up some ROM space – between 8MB and 14MB (more info to come)
• Shows “GPRS, 3G” instead of only “GPRS” in the “add a new modem” area under “connections”
• An additional number of improvements made to camera/mms/phone functions

 As you may have noticed, this does not address any “network issues” which are one of the major concerns customers are having, especially in the US. This is still being studied & worked on and a ROM upgrade will follow. For this one we do not yet have an ETA, but we will continue to press for a quick resolution.

If any of you are unhappy with your device performance, and cannot wait for these upgrades, then please do not hesitate to return or exchange your item within your return period.

I am still monitoring these forums to get input from you all to add to the "fix request" list, but I will not be answering every post as I need the time to put together the list & make sure the next update (with any fixes this one does not address) gets done quickly, so as I've said before, email support@ubiquio.com if you have an urgent inquiry.

Regards,

Martha

Martha - thanks for the update. I appreciate the complexities of software development, so understand that delays cannot always be avoided :)

The fixes slated for this ROM update sound like they'll address my main issue with the keyboard, and perhaps some of the instability issues. With a (near?) future second ROM upgrade to fix the network issues, and some community generated hacks, I think this will become the defacto device for those that want 'everything'!!

Please do keep us informed of progress (& delays) though - where will the ROM Update be announced?

- Nick

And while we are in the subject of fixes and updates.

When I tested the UBiQUiO in rotated 'portrait' mode to run mylegacy PocketPC applications, I noticed an extreme slowdown of its' graphics abilities, a problem identified better with this benchmark posted in pocketnow.com's review:

 Very Anemic for a 520 MHz device, wouldn't you say?

Please oh please give us an explanation why; it is very much appreciated.

Nwarren: It will be posted on this forum and on the UBiQUiO site under support.

Martha

Vageli:

This is news to me as you're the first one to bring this issue up. I'm not sure how this was compiled, so I need to wrap my head around it and I need to run it by my engineers in order to get an explanation, but give me some time because I need them to solve the network issues on AT&T & another network in China first.

Martha

Martha:

UBiQUiO's video driver appears to be doing something wrong; any applications using graphics such as games or even the standard Office MS apps redraw very slowly. You can notice this if an alert window was drawn before the device automatically powered off. When you power it up again, the alert's outline is drawn for a few seconds.

I believe that this needs to be looked at; it would be crucial for the device's long term success with power users and the casual gamer.

Thank you in advance for your consideration.

Must say, I have been running GPS software on it and found no problems with it.

Yoni,
eXpansys Product Support,
Forum Search

I have been running Tom Tom 6 with no major issues however further testing indicates that indeed there is something at fault with the way the video buffer is handled. Legacy games from Microsoft's entertainment pack Cubicle Chaos, Fire Drill and PacMan that have been runiing with no issues on all other WM6 Pro devices like P4330 and T-Mo Wing are crawling and unusuable in the 503g, The same thing happens with pdamill's snails.

I have nad problems using Slingplayer on it as well.

I believe that this 'issue' doesn't help with the keyboard lag either; if the graphics subsystem is not optimized, it would certainly exert a toll on other systems as well. Please note that the other systems benchmarked are all using 200MHz OMAP CPU's and perform better by a factor of 30.

Please understand that as much as I really appreciate the device, such a disparity indicates that there is much more power possible to be harnessed from a more mature ROM build.

TechFaith/Expansys crew, thank you in advance for your support and your serious consideration of this issue.